Login

Gregg Shapiro

There are few filmmakers who have experienced the degree of acclaim and recognition achieved by Chilean writer/director Sebastián Lelio in recent years. “Gloria”, his fourth full-length feature from 2013, brought Lelio both his widest audience and his most consistently favorable reviews.

Uplifting and inspiring stories based on real people are all the rage at the multiplex this season. Arriving on the Chuck Taylored heels of “Blinded By The Light” is “Brittany Runs A Marathon”(Amazon Studios). The directorial debut by playwright Paul Downs Colaizzo (who also wrote the screenplay), “Brittany Runs A Marathon” is an entertaining first feature.

Some movies, more than others, need to be experienced in a full movie theater. It makes the shared emotions, laughing and crying, take on more significance. “Instant Family”(Paramount) is one such movie.

The old adage “the more things change, the more they stay the same” has never been truer than now in the age of Trump. The rise of fascism, nationalism and racial violence in the states and across Europe feels like a terrifying kind of deja vu.

Rest assured that from the first moment we see Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek with prosthetic teeth) onscreen in “Bohemian Rhapsody”, on the morning of Queen’s 1985 Live Aid reunion performance, he is gay. This was during Mercury’s clone-look era, complete with mustache, short and neat haircut, studded leather armband and tight, faded jeans. Gay, gay, gay. Anything you might have heard about Mercury’s gayness being whitewashed is bollocks.

(Mirror) The first three months of the year make up the part of the winter movie season where bad movies go to die. Films deemed unworthy of release at other times of the year are unleashed on unsuspecting moviegoers, resulting in tragic box office returns and scathing reviews.

Based on Susanne Bier’s Academy Award-nominated 2006 Danish film of the same name, Bart Freundlich’s “After The Wedding” (Sony Pictures Classics) is the second of his Oscar-winning wife Julianne Moore’s 2019 Hollywood remakes of acclaimed foreign films.